The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is not a bloated big-screen
vehicle that misses the point of its source material entirely. Indeed, the opening five minutes represent a surprsingly clever brand of self-awareness, the kind that promises a brisk and satisfying stroll dose
of cartoon nostalgia. From the outset, it's clear that this is Jay Ward's
Rocky and Bullwinkle, complete with adult references, howlingly awful puns
and still more howlingly awful puns. Could this finally be the kind of
live-action cartoon Hollywood has been trying to make for years, only to
botch the job over and over again?

No.

Believe me, I wanted to get giddy over The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, which opens with protagonists Rocket J. Squirrel and
Bullwinkle J. Moose. (voiced by original Rocky June Foray and Keith Scott,
respectively) living tedious animated lives in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota
35 years after the cancellation of their television series. Their
arch-nemeses Boris Badenov, Natasha Fatale and Fearless Leader have been
similarly stuck in re-runs, until Fearless Leader formulates a plan to get
them yanked into the real world. The now-real Leader (Robert DeNiro), Boris (Jason Alexander) and Natasha (Rene Russo) then develop a scheme for
world domination through stupefyingly bad television, and it appears that
nothing can stand in their way. Unless, that is, wet-behind-the-ears FBI
agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) can yank a pair of cartoon animals
into reality to save the day.

The aforementioned prologue gets Rocky and Bullwinkle off to a fast
start, with Keith Scott doing amusing work both as Bullwinkle and
replacing William Conrad as the narrator. The opening sets up Frostbite
Falls as an animated ghost town, its economy left in a shambles when the
moose and squirrel's show got the axe; even the narrator has been reduced
to commenting dramatically on events in his home after being forced to
live with his mother. It's a funny idea, as is the idea of Fearless
Leader's plot to entrap a Hollywood producer (Janeane Garofolo) by
offering the movie rights to "Rocky and Bullwinkle." Jay Ward's cartoons
were always a strangely deft mix of smart and silly, which is a fairly
accurate description of Rocky and Bullwinkle for a few hundred blissful seconds.

Then, inevitably and tragically, we leave the hand-drawn world for
something considerably more drab. Whatever twisted force convinces studio
executives that The Flintstones, George of the Jungle, Dudley Do-Right or Rocky and Bullwinkle
have something more to offer us with human actors is in need of immediate
exorcising. There's something about an animated world, even a
crudely-drawn animated world, that changes the rules; Ward could get away
with groaners that would make you want to stuff a sock in a human mouth
that uttered them. It certainly doesn't help that some of the human actors
appear befuddled by the whole enterprise. Rene Russo waits for about half
an hour before she gets to utter a word of dialogue, and still looks like
she's waiting around for the rest of the film. As for newcomer Piper
Perabo, what little comedic timing she may have isn't enhanced by acting
opposite a pair of visual effects. DeNiro has fun with Fearless Leader,
but it's not nearly enough. A self-deprecating gag referring to Who Framed Roger Rabbit? doesn't change the fact that Roger's concept was made for its format, and vice-versa. Rocky and Bullwinkle are cartoons in a human
world simply because they could be.

There are more than a few decent gags in playwright Kenneth
Lonergan's script for Rocky and Bullwinkle -- the title of Fearless
Leader's perfectly awful televsion series will set me to giggling for a
few days -- and a lack of bombast that makes it infinitely easier to
swallow. It's also a cheerful film that's perfectly suit